======== SAMPLE 1 ======== who are like you, we have, we learn, we grow, and when we need to step away from the fringes or the periphery of our territory, we adjust our focus to some extent. We rely on others to fill in blanks and manage us, and even our allies, if they don’t mind, they prioritize keeping an acceptable distance. I like to think that the only people who could realistically see us as having an existential threat are us." Alec shrugged, reaching up to take her hand and shake it. "So let’s not underestimate Dragon. At the very least, we’ll do our best to avoid overplaying our hand, and I think we’ll do that even if our expectations of you are a little low. We have a firm grip on this dimension, we keep each other safe." I glanced at the portal. It was clear from the gravity of it that this portal had been left abandoned. The only structure around it was a long corridor of halls, nearly four stories tall. The hallways here were narrow, the hallways there were extensive, extending into the Brockton Bay territory that had separated the settlement from Earth Bet. "You don’t really keep that in mind, sometimes," Tattletale said. "Making bad calls? Putting ourselves at too much risk?" "Don’t remind me," Alec said. "You don’t," I echoed Tattletale’s words, didn’t want to remind him. "If you’re not going to do something, then we need to think of a way this crisis could be handled best." "Dinah," I said. "Dinah. Yes. Of course." "Then we’ll do it," Dinah said. "I don’t like it, but I’ll do it. Together." "Together?" "We’ll fight the Nine," I said. "That meeting, when it was announced we were combining forces? We discussed it. With the idea that our factions could mount a rescue bid, Dinah could join the ranks of the people, if we so chose." Dinah shook her head, staring out at the water. "So that’s why there’s that?" I asked. "I feel… betrayed," she said. "I thought we were so similar, on some levels." "I feel the same way," I said. "I get that there are deep-seated disagreements, but I wholeheartedly agree with your decision." "I don’t feel that strongly," she said. "I don’t feel anything like you do. But I don’t feel like there’s any war happening, either here or elsewhere. We were in the limelight, and somehow that’s handled. This isn’t some peripheral issue. If we go by what you said about the media, then yes, things are just hot enough that people are getting riled up. Worn words, said with an edge, given the wrong aura." "I’m not disagreeing," I said, before she could get her feet under her again and slam her hands on the ground. "Why?" she asked. "You can’t be a hero and sleep rough on the job." "I get that. It’s Dust, right? It settles in the air, and sure, we both breathe equally, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something wrong with me. I put on a face, I make sacrifices, I’m a little gruff sometimes, I talk less, I… I don’t want to sound insulting, but you and I have pretty much the same credentials. We’re… what? Substandard?" "Not a villain," I said, adding a final layer to my statement, "Not a thug." "There’s flaws in every set of credentials, yeah. But I’m not disagreeing." "There isn’t, don’t tell me you don’t!" "There’s flaws in every set of credentials. But I disagree with the statement." "This isn’t a disagreement. You’re being paranoid." Dinah had left the room, and I was about to respond, but I heard something. Was caught in between. My best friend. My bugs caught the scrape on the edge of her mask. They began drifting to her, their movements jerky, looping and looping. She was telling me the truth, and it didn’t matter if they heard it or not. I’ ======== SAMPLE 2 ======== who was making his way back upstairs, leaving the door open behind him. Miss Militia reached the top of the stairs, gesturing to Bastard. "Bitch! Good girl. Is your dog okay?" Bitch nodded. She looked a little freaked out. She looked just a little hurt, too. "Dog. I’m worried they’ll kill us if we don’t growl like animals first." "They’re wolves. Wolves move with their mouths closed, lip and teeth set firmly on one side of their face. Agreed," Grue spoke, "It’s probably how they compartmentalized you." Miss Militia frowned. "I don’t want to get rid of the dog, will you stop trying to provoke me?" "No. I’m going after the kids," Grue spoke, "We can’t get them to turn on Bastard if they aren’t willing." He turned to take two steps and fell. A flicker of confusion caught her eye. "Oh. Hi. Hi." Her eyes widened a little. This is a bad time. "Let’s… let’s just… stop. There’s nothing I can do about the Nine, right now. They were-" "No." There was a long pause. She saw Grue’s expression change to concern, saw a look of pure horror crossing his face. "There’s something I can do," she said, as if she had to get out of the way or hide her emotions so she wouldn’t sound unlikable. "I was hoping I had something to look into this past week, that my investigations into the ABB could yield some leads. Turns out we don’t have anything solid to work with, so it’s just me and the memories I culled from the memories of their members." "And you don’t know what they did?" He asked. Without breaking eye contact, he asked, "What are you hoping to find out?" She didn’t look interested in answering. "Past week? This past week? I don’t know. But I haven’t been here, and it was… chaos." She stopped and rubbed her chin. "This past week, I’ve been… careful. Paranoid. I’ve probably turned the most antisocial little bastard of all time. But I’m trying to be nice, just looking at the situation." His shoulders slumped a little, and he said, "I’ve spent more time in that bank, maybe more, trying to think on my feet than I did in the last three months. But I feel like I just got sent back to square one. Like I’ve got nothing to contribute, and maybe I know how." "You do know how?" "I’ve heard about this stuff, you know." "I do. But it’s not the same. I… there’s a difference," he said, unable to find the word to adequately express his feelings. He seemed to come to the realization about what he was feeling in middle school, early one morning, finding himself in his father’s bed at nearly eleven in the evening, the TV off, the movie wishing it was still on instead. The subject of his hair, too, had come up as his cell phone rang. He ignored it for the moment. "I dunno. I feel like I deserve to have some of the most important stuff to happen to me, so why not give it to you?" She offered him a hard look, "Not really. But I think you’re missing the point." "My offer is still open," he said. He took a second to take it in. "I can fight." "Fighting Lung?" "Last I heard, he was holding back," Grue replied. "Not engaging." "Villain down, BB-8. We’re clearing the area, waiting for the last wave of transports," Miss Militia told him. "You can drop that backpack we were talking about, hold on to it. I’ll make sure you and your team get some fresh air." "Thank you," he said, dropping the backpack into the trash. He took a second to get his bearings, and it wasn’t the best day. He was a little disoriented, a little disoriented. It was like being lost for air. "Villain unmasked. Not so hard. You follow?" He thought about it. He could remember seeing the video online, the articles popping up, when the story first made its way around the web. He read ======== SAMPLE 3 ======== who said. "You are in a bad position, Emily. You are trusting your manager in an area where there are very few people who are willing to work for you. I don’t know how that applies in the long run, but I have a lot of respect for Mr. Calle." "Oh, I respect him, yes," Emily said, sounding genuinely surprised. Emily’s smile faltered. "You should get on his case about this." "I’m telling you because I want to." "Tell him to fuck off, then." Emily walked over to the office that was being used as a staging area. She sat at the large, windowless desk, and Madeleine took her place at the small desk nearby. "Anything urgent?" the Director called out from across the room. Emily spun around. "No. It’s fine. Major stuff." "Take your time." "Artemis? What happened to her?" "I wanted a car." Madeleine laughed. "How did you know?" "At the funeral." The Director didn’t miss the opportunity. "You’re a car freak, like Brian." "I lived across the street from you. I used to ride the trams, back when the tracks were being reconstructed. Never thought I’d live down a tramp, but I’d cross the street to get here and back then, just to see what you’d do. ‘Cross the street and run into you again’. But she was dead, you understand?" Anna shook her head. "I kind of wants to know what’s going on, but I’m going to sit here and let you guess." "I understand," Emily said. She crossed the room, fidgeted with the keys in her teeth. "Put the keys in the ignition, get the hell out of my driveway, okay, then we’re done. Or I’ll drive. I don’t care anymore." Making eye contact with Madeleine would be hard. For now, she made herself look even. "You don’t think the PRT owes you a favor? I’m not about to stop you. I’ve been down this road before." "The difference is I’m not going to do it to give you a black eye or anything like that," Emily said. She fidgeted more. "It’s more than just friendship. I’m not…" "The difference is that I’d really like to hang out again, after this, and I’d REALLY like to hang out again, one way or another." "You do whatever you want," she said. She sat on the edge of the desk. "Come on, Kate." "Okay," Kate prodded Kate’s lower body with her elbow. When Kate obeyed, she reached out to put the kettle on, put down her fork, and then started serving herself. Madeleine took over for the rest of the breakfast burrs, serving herself and getting her caffeine. "You’re here for this shitshow, dumbass?" Kate asked. "For now. But if this blows over and we have to go there, we can come back to reality and… well, reality falls apart." "Fucked up world. What the hell was that about?" "Was it Gallant or Colby or some other dumbass who can’t even start to name one thing he did wrong?" Madeleine gave Kate a look as if she had just asked a question. Seeing that, Kate clarified, "You’re about the size of a melon. Gallant was sixty, Colby was over sixty. You’d be my daddy." "Daddy’s not around anymore. You were there for the start of something, then you shove it all away." "I had to have something to rely on. Everyone had to have something to fall back on. I looked, looked at my family, my friends, and… shucks, shucks, I’m not good at this. Only the fuck I know how to do. I’m only ten years younger than Augustus. That’s nine years I spent completely lost in thoughts and feelings. And now I don’t know what to do. I can’t figure out how to get by, so I’m homeless, literally. I hate myself for it, but I don’t know how to offer you up for adoption." "How did things go with P ======== SAMPLE 4 ======== who could move the beams. A power the Doctor hadn’t anticipated. It was kind of counter-intuitive. If I was stupid enough to think this way, then perhaps something as specific and as general as the possibility existed, and the Doctor had been wrong. But something as specific as that… no, I wanted to be sure this wasn’t counter-intuitive, precise. I set some barriers between the Doctor and Noelle. I could see her as ‘nothing’s important’. Then, before I could get too worried about the regeneration, I moved the cage door and shut it. I could focus on the other elements of my barrier, the decoys. As I had with the tinker, I was careful about spacing the decoys around Noelle. I’d placed screws, rings and chain links in the concrete walls, while smaller pieces of wood and cardstock were screwed into the cracks between the cracks, to give some additional support. The biggest problem with my first time fighting Noelle, apart from the usual no-holds-barred approach I got with fighting other Endbringers, was the sheer amount of bugs I was deploying. I couldn’t hope to draw attention to myself if I was going to be able to adapt, and I wasn’t going to be able to keep the little escapes hatch from attracting attention. I set the decoys up to swap Noelle’s location with something safer, and I sent the bulk of the bugs to their new destinations. More screws, smaller rings, and smaller pieces of wood were screwed into gaps in the walls to give more support and bulk to the decoys. When both were in position, I gathered the components, left them where they were, and then made another. Then I pulled herself free of the containment foam, slashing my hand out in an attempt to get the decoys free. As I did it, I felt a dull agony in my elbow. It wasn’t spider silk, exactly, but there was some equivalence somewhere between living tissue and thread, at least in part. Legumes, I realized. I attempted to retch my elbow but failed to do so fast enough. With my momentum carried away from the leg, I swiped at the decoys. As the thread and components slipped from my hand, I used the clairvoyant’s power to secure them. Before she could rip free, I was dragging my arm back behind me as I swung my leg out to one side, targeting a piece of wood at my chest. The wood cut deep, and I almost lost my grip on my clairvoyant. I had to make do, though, as my leg nearly clubbed my hand back. I managed to get my footing and turn to run, stepping onto the concrete of the roof’s edge for cover. The bugs from beneath drew the attention of the capes on the ground, who promptly moved out of my way. The screaming in my head wasn’t slowing down, and it wasn’t letting up. I gave up on walking and ordered myself to fire up the sealing wax, sealing off my nose and mouth. I pulled the wax from my mouth and then set to blowing steam into the already open air. Just that little breeze moved some of the bugs to my location. If I’d been trying to focus on doing something like an effective dance, I failed. I saw flickers of movement on Clockblocker’s face, tried to take it all in. His face was a mess of concerns: fear, confusion, frailty, loss of limbs, diminished stamina… An idea struck me. Clockblocker’s face twisted in disgust. Or maybe it was the realization that I didn’t have more bugs in my range, didn’t have more information about what was going on in Noelle’s head. Fuck me, I was getting sick. I let the thread slip from my hand and caught myself against the concrete of the rooftop for balance. Fell, and the tip made contact with Grue, knocking him to the ground. He stood, quickly, before drawing a tube the same way he’d built his costume around: with the same rods that held his armor together, attached by the threads to his harness. He fired it toward the crater, then rolled so he struck the crater as he came down, not even realizing the impact had happened. He began spreading the rod’s circumference until it was a foot across. He reached out with his other arm, and a cone of it, clear as crystal, rose from the ground, five or six feet tall. It was topped by a sphere of clear ether that pulsed with the effects of my power. ======== SAMPLE 5 ======== who didn’t have me on the field, but I had my bugs, and I sensed them moving across the field. I still had my bugs on Yamada, which was something I needed. The problem was, I needed those bugs to live. I could sense things with my power, but they were helpful only insofar as they informed me and let me know where the bugs were. If I killed one or two of the bugs sitting on a corpse, I lost any information they provided. A drop of soy sauce in water wouldn’t do anything against a goodly number of bees. If, with a trickle of blood, a hundred bees flowed down the drain of a road less traveled than this one, a hundred swarm here, a pitiful few nameless ones across the road there… My heart was pounding as I approached the scene of the battle. I couldn’t spare the bugs I had on hand. Yamada-san stood at the edge of the field, in the midst of striking a blow out of the corner of her eye against Leviathan’s upper body. A sprayor was biting deeply into the pavement, while a few ants and beetles made their way over the surface, creating a dense cloud. Along the horizon, Tokyo Bay stood in ruins. After being flooded, the area was slowly being eroded by briny water that had high salt content, making the beaches slippery. Some streets were cracked, roads patrolled by traffic scouts looking for looters and thieves. Leviathan, engaged in a dogfight with the dogs, was distracted by a stray attack from Puma, who was turning tail and running- –The effected areaada unfolded before me, a maze of aquatic plants and insects, with an oversize plant growing within the area, surrounded by a droplet of water droplets. The size of a large cow, the plant reached into the thickest part of his body, the area beneath his skin, beneath his jaw, neck and breast. In a few seconds, the water was flowing down from the clouds that were dropping from the sky above, condensing and slopping to the ground. When the plant material heard the faintest vibrating noise, it spat the plant out. I tried to speak, and emotion caught my voice. Not desperation, not loss, but something heavy in my voice. "It’s too soon," Yamada said. She was right. It was too soon. Now was the moment where we legitimately attempted to fight, so we might as well prepare for the fight. If we were fighting, then Grey Boy would be a late addition. If he was helping, even indirectly, then I could focus on suppressing the Nine. If he was destroying, we’d be forced to improvise, to use powers and counter powers to keep them off-balance. But the heroes weren’t fighting. Beside me, the Undersiders were staring up at the city. One of the members had just arrived, a young girl. Imp. She’d had her powers revoked, unless there was something more than meets the eye with this version of the Cauldron formula. Cherish sniffed, then whistled, hard. Birds were flocking to her, as if she were scrambling to find an escape route. Silk Route. I thought. I’d held off on recruiting for this reason. She wasn’t useful enough to warrant the wait. But a voice vibrated through my ears the same way Wards were looking up at the looming fight. A female voice, reassuring, composed. I turn to look, and I see a figure in the widescreen television that was earlier wearing the same uniform that the Wards were: a blue and white striped undershirt, with the same light gray flaps down the front that matched the bright blue suits the PRT had worn. The TV was on, and the heroes were obscured from view by the droplets of water that rolled down the drain and pooled in the toilet bowl, accumulating until it was purple-green. "Wards!" Weld shouted, as the heroes turned away. "Respond to my signal!" There was a clapping, followed by the sounds of a few brief whistles. The group parted to give him room. The sounds of the smaller whistles of warning and admonishment were a lost cause when there wasn’t anyone to be warned of. A splash of cool water interrupted my descent. I glanced up to see Imp, Weld, Clockblocker, Vista and Kid Win standing in the middle of the driveway, watching the heroes away. The water splashed around the grates as the heroes moved through our driveway, and the dust and clamors that resulted were what the Wards were using as an offensive weapon. Assault ======== SAMPLE 6 ======== who had lost something crucial. He’d been an ally. It was hard for him to imagine losing someone so essential. Bellaard was what made the other worlds possible. He’d been the guy who could have defeated Glory Girl, had been leader of the Protectorate. The guy who could have defeated Jack Slash. The guy who had helped Leviathan evolve. It could have been the reason he’d fallen so easily, so easily betrayed by Bakuda. Or, even, it could have been the reason he’d become what he was: an enforcer and a killer. Was he still a monster, a monster with a history, still shrouded in lies? The thought shook him. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to suspend his disbelief to the exclusion of all else to consider that possibility. Bakuda could well have been his best bet for taking down the Nine, putting an end to their malicious rule over the West End. "Five," Weld called out, at the same time the others reacted to what the PRT was doing. It took them a second to process. They focused on the visual of the figure in the water again. Five capes. The helicopter’s rotor blades scraped against the sand as it lifted. Weld and Scapegoat were lifted up as well, their hands linked by a length of chain, while the chain kept them up and out of reach of the remaining thruster. The spotlights dancing over the water’s surface reminded him of the thruster. It was the same one he’d seen Eidolon use, pistoning the water out to blur the lights and reduce the size of the effect. There were two larger cannons that followed close behind it, as well, but they had a different arrangement of weapons. There was one that was spherical, machine gun-like, the other shorter, not much longer than a car, with two barrels that led down into the water, illuminated by the glow of the surrounding buildings. He didn’t go much deeper than the docks, unless he was in a hurry. Five or so cities to go. He was pretty sure he could see the West End, Cambridge, or maybe the Docks, with all of the missing parts. That was with regards to the Undersiders and Brockton Bay Wards. There was a massive effort underway on the highest level. Every single flag that was flying at half mast was a red flag, a telling foreshadowing of things to come. He could see the general planning, the organizational chart the PRT had compiled from various interviews and forces that were said to be contributing to the problem. But most troubling to him was the vague possibility that they could be targets. He could visualize it. For every red flag there was five colors, and every flag that was flying had five possible hues. Blue, Green, Yellow, Red… He targeted one flag. He didn’t touch the others, or the globe-tinted visor that Whirlwind might have placed over his eyes. Each tick mark represented a planet in the zone he was supposed to target. For every planet he touched, every flag flew at half staff. And he realized he could see a rough shading there, a tertiary world with humid or hot clumps of cloud in the center. He targeted another, and he could see the same thing. An overcast world with humidity and cold clumps of cloud. He targeted three, and he could see the same thing. Again, he could see the overlapping, tertiary worlds. He targeted four, and he could see the same thing. Only this time, there were no dull blue highlights. The lights went out. In the final destination planet, a thick yellow mist erupted. Water filled the atmosphere. "What-" he started. He stopped as a man in yellow did something in response. "Planet," Weld said, but his voice was strained, "Out of this World." The man stepped forward, almost sheepish. "Earthly?" he asked, the word thrown around to cover allusions and allusions only, "King?" Fenja and Menja, the former of whom he took a liking to, passed through the opening. He stretched a hand towards his companions. He was surrounded by a half dozen of the colorful masks they’d seized from villains around the city. "I thought you said there weren’t any heroes that were fit to fight," Weld said, quiet. "We didn’t say that," Bitch answered. "Good enough." Weld looked at her nine year old son, Xander, "What would you want, little boy?" "I’ll go help my dad, ======== SAMPLE 7 ======== who was in charge of our territory. "What’s the point of this?" Noelle asked. There was an awkward silence between the two. "Simplification," he said. "First off, let me clear up a few things. Alexandria is not dead. We were notified just before she emerged from the mall. As for the girl… well, let me show you. A stunner." He stuck a knife through her hand, held her arm out to one side, so she couldn’t raise it. He then handed her a piece of paper. "It’s a notepad," she observed. "Notepad," he grunted, simultaneously adjusting the knife’s blade, raising it to his chest, "I need you to write down a time and a destination. Think about it." She nodded. He put the knife back in her hand and stepped away, walking away. "Let me show you," he said. He stopped, turning to the girl, "Writing down some basic commands from here?" She paused for a moment, and then wrote down two commands. It was like a computer program, but her thoughts were chaotic, preoccupied. "Move." It was a challenge, pushing her limits, pushing herself to use her abilities to help people. It was a way of testing her newfound strength. She could do two things with her power. The first was to assume the worst, to use it without thinking about it. To use it on her enemies, her enemies who were likely to die or be maimed in the next ten or twenty seconds. To do that, she needed time and a place with more space. She set the knife down on the ground, and then she stayed, crouching at the corner of the roof where one corner collapsed, overhanging the part where the roadway met short walls and the alleyway that still surrounded the mall. She took a seat on the one wall of the alley, feet on the metal walkway. Between the walls that framed the walkway were two circular objects. The area was dark, which was unusual, given that the lights were on. Fully half of the mall had closed down in the span of an hour, before Leviathan had arrived. Water was running at the edges of the water trough the rain-streaked floor, filling the lower levels where the concrete was still bubbling. The other half of the mall was intact, a labyrinth of circular racks and bins with thudding rhythm to the rumbles of old shops crumpling like in a tide. Bagpipes blared and people played music. It was disorienting, as if there was an invisible, harsh boundary between where the chaos seemed to rest and where the shoppers and employees happened to be. There had been a rumor going around that the heroes were making their way to Brockton Bay to pick up their injured. It was unsubstantiated, and Victoria suspected that whatever had happened at the mall, the heroes were here and taking it in stride. Maybe they were being cautious, waiting until the aliens got close, and sent their reinforcements with threats in mind. Maybe they were sending civilians? It didn’t matter. The fact that Brockton Bay was losing its mind population like it was showed Victoria how much it needed the chaos. She let herself slump back into the fetal position, head resting against her chest. Somewhere along the line, aliens or the girls who dressed like aliens got out of the shopping bags with weapons or violence in their hands, and the men and women stepped out, fighting or swearing. The civilians got on their knees and worshipped the various figures that were adorning the displays in head scarves and gym shirts. Some were so short they could almost be women. It was a strange sight, to behold. The huge teddy bears, the people who barely looked like members of the Protectorate, immaculate. It was a scene that might have seemed familiar, if she had any conception of her own size, her gender or her arc. In awe of all things, she stared down at her feet in front of her. Up until the moment the man with the knife appeared, obscured by his hood, cape and steel halberchief, she didn’t show it. He approached, his back to the long counter. He was almost impossible to make out, obscured by the half-sphere-work he’d put together and the detail he’d set up as his hood. Except his back was bare, his feet to his palms. His breath fogged in the air. "Bugs, please," he said, turning to gesture for the rest of the store to rob him of his treat. The roving horde of nubs of cockroaches streamed down the aisle, some landing in ======== SAMPLE 8 ======== who had fallen, and with what cost? Bokor found it ironic that Dragon was the same person as Defiant. Dragon was the machine that was ostensibly making Teslas, but she was also building herself. Each vehicle was a carefully engineered slice of that machine, a fraction of a percent of it self. Dragon needed a slice, not so much to make the necessary changes, but to get the geometry and general layout just right. That was why she was as light as she was. If she had to eat to repair the damage she had done… well, she would repair it. As others repaired it, she would expand it. Or she would expand it, and do it better, if she could even afford to. The fragments would be refurbished, and then she would reap the full benefits. Of course, they knew that the checks and balances in the Simurgh’s legal system were ineffectual, that there was no law that could effectively address what happened here. Laws could and did differentiate between good and evil, but in the end, the Guild stood to lose far more than it would gain, here. If the Guild was to blame for this tragedy, then I was to blame for being in the right place at the right time. Defiant turned away from the screen to look up at Echidna, who was creating more of her duplicates. I could see him falter, visibly discomforted. He is annoyed, I thought. He is upset, or he is getting tired of this, this endless debate. I don’t like that there is no resolution. There was a way off, but there was no going back. I reconfigured my camera to follow the path Echidna would take. The little paths my bugs took were mostly vertical, but there were some horizontal. The paths that traced horizontal lines of pain and suffering marked the ups and downs of my bugs’ vision. If there was a limit to how far I could move my camera’s field of view, I didn’t have enough to spare. I moved it to a point three-quarters of the way between myself and Echidna, setting the aim for the robot dragon’s ‘mouth’. It was a stupid move. She would have hit me with the blast and sent me flying. She didn’t even need to land to tap the camera’s focus. The jump was stiff, and I wasn’t sure I would have been able to control it if it had been a little wider. I forced my bugs to shorten the upward movement, instead. No use. Echidna was too mobile. Still, her duplicates extended further, and they moved further still. There was an empty void where the long-distance shooting had been and I was now moving towards it. The camera’s view shifted again, before it settled on me. My bugs drifting in the direction my hand had been when it met my shoulder, showing a mushroom gray over a black background. The camera pointed a wrong way, to the right than the left. The bug’s wings let it turn in mid-air. It briefly changed direction, and the upward movement worked again. The downward movement failed to get the model halfway to me. The controls responded again, and the movement was again sturdily, the model flying in the direction the original motion had fallen had made it stop mid-landing. The ramp ended, IAD-style, and IAD fell from the wall. "Good job, Weaver," Defiant said. "You okay?" Vantage asked, as he recognized the hero. Yes, I was okay, the thought was a distant memory. But I was okay nonetheless. A little more confident, knowing I was okay. "…And you are goddamn tired. That’s quite enough," Leister said. "Ready?" Dragon asked. "Ready," I answered. Where the bugs flowed from my back, through the gaps in my costume and along the sleeves of my costume to my arms, I could feel them taking hold. They were there, giving me my signal. She controlled them, drifting a short distance to one side, drawing the swarm back to herself as the swarm swelled. I could feel her creating a narrow barrier between myself and the mass of bugs. Like a snail going over sand, I was nearly hidden from the mass of bugs. "She’s using her power?" Leister asked. "Why wouldn’t she? With ninety percent of the power we could ever need?" "She was distracted, Cole was trying to blow up the device, and the mechanical spiders stepped in," I said. "It’s a safe bet." ======== SAMPLE 9 ======== who had been brought in, there was only one place where he could go," Skitter said. "She wanted me to choose between protecting her and visiting the Wards. No choice left." "She thought the cost of taking care of her would be too high an price to pay when the heroes were in such bad shape," I said. "Whether she knew or not isn’t the point. This is the bigger picture. She wanted a third option. It covered most of the bases, for starters. If she was willing to take that road, I was willing to say ‘okay, we can mediate, or even offer our assistance, but she wanted autonomy over her own life, her own trips to the hospital, etc. etc." "But you were only willing to suggest that because you’re scared," Weld said. "I’m less scared than I was. But I was still willing to go into this with Skitter as our long-term leader. I‘m not." Weld turned around, and his voice was a little hard, "Really now?" "You know I can read emotions." "I do. Tell me it’s okay if I pull stuff here and there. I’ll know it’s you." "You’ll have to understand, it’s not. It’s not that I don’t care about this, but I’ve been working on this for weeks and months, and there’s literally no guarantee I’ll be able to salvage this. I can give you direction, but when it comes down to it, you’re just pawns." I shut my eyes. It hurt to look at the walls. I could see the labels: REPORTS, PAST CONVERSATIONS, NOT A YEAR O SLOGGER. "I don’t pull my punches," Weld said. "Every action I carry out has consequences. I won’t turn my back on this. I’ll tell you what I’m doing, then we’d sit here and you tell me to go fuck myself. I can do that, or I can tell you the consequences if I go rogue and start fucking up worse than you’d expect. Hell, it could be that I do more good in the long run than you do. You want that autonomy? You can give it to me. I don’t need your trust. I don’t need your organization. I’ll make you fall in love with me, and all the while, I’m slipping away." "Not your fault," Shadow Stalker said, and I didn’t translate that to her group, the bugs still buzzing in my ears. I turned my head to look at her. "You’re a loyal man, but you’re also a very stupid man. You think you are owed a favor, yet you’re more concerned with your own desires and self-delusion than anyone else’s lives." I looked away. My head was starting to throb with pain, and the rest of the swarm was telling me I needed to stay still and not move. "I’m sorry," she said. I looked up at her. My eyes were watering. I tried to maintain my order, but it didn’t help. "If you owe me a favor, let me know when you do it. When you betray me, I’ll take you aside and make the case for your loyalty." She met my gaze. I could tell by the color of her skin. "Take this to the people at the top," she said. Then, looking to Shadow Stalker, she said, "You said it yourself, there is no point to this." "Anyone who pays attention knows there is. Doesn’t matter, really. They will notice if I betray them. If I betray you, well, you can have assassin’s bullets traveling between cities, if you pull this stunt again, I’ll see you get your comeuppance the second it’s in your city." "You’re not giving me the option of running!?" Shadow Stalker snarled. "There are options. You could go solo. That’s all I’m willing to give you. There’s no immediate danger, and it’s one performance in a long series of ones and zeroes that make up this one performance. You can go home, miss your morning run, or you can try again sometime in the next two weeks. I’m here if you need you." "So am I," Shadow Stalker ======== SAMPLE 10 ======== who he thought he had a chance of beating. Or it could be he’s afraid of how easily someone else could use an Anomaly to their advantage. It can’t be that simple. "Okay," Parian said, feeling a little angrier with every sentence. "Not fucking about," Imp cut in, after she’d stepped outside. "You don’t fucking have to come." "I get it," Grue responded. "We’ve been through a lot." "We’ve been through a lot," Imp agreed. "But we’re not going to be distracted any longer. Attention, please. The Nine." There were only two people who fit the Nine’s description, and both were outside. A man and a woman. The man waved his hands in front of him in a kind of fluttering motion, as if letting the air pass. When he exhaled, his hair and beard flicked backwards, and his eyes flicked towards the sky, they were green with a dying red... Red, but not Yang’s. The woman in prison sweats appeared to be the same as the man’s, but her clothes were a different shade of yellow-green, with dots of dirt and fine flourishes that helped further obscure her features. Her hand was trembling. "You," Grue told her, backing away. "You’re one of the people we thought might be able to sell the situation. If it comes down to it, you can help us. There’s no other way." "No," she retorted. "I don’t want to." "Then you just do what you need to. It’s up to you whether you save your friends or whether you help the butcher and his people." "Both are possible," she thought. "You could go with my soldiers, or I could go with the Butcher." "You could do the latter." "You could." He left. Grue stood where he was, hands folded in front of his chest. "We have the items and we have your driver," Grue said. "If it comes down to it, we split into three groups of four and we head out." "He’s giving chase," I said. "Either he’s passing through or he’s found some way to get to us." "Maybe," Grue replied, his tone dry. Three second delay before he gave the order. Three items crossed my mind. Possibly four, if I looked at the timing of when he said it. Grue wouldn’t have gone out alone, but I saw how the others were giving him less than full attention. I also, unconsciously, wondered if Tattletale would join them. I opened my mouth to ask about Dinah, but Coil spoke before I could. "She was right when she said her route connects back to the others. Each of our routes leads to places our powered members are drawn to." I opened my mouth to speak, and found only murmurs. "Speaking of which, why isn’t my group attracting people like that Dodger bag man? Seems like he’s gone feral. Had a few thugs with rat bites and cholera before. Brutus, Judas and Angelica, I think his last big hit was an ability called Fulminant." Silence. "Anyways, the important thing to know is that the Nine are getting more ruthless, and that’s going to bother some people. They did turn on us at the end of the world, but I suspect that’s because they realized we weren’t as threatening or as strong as we could be. The same people who thought ABB members were the new normal in this world might be worried that the group that includes you Bag people would be too normal, too Western." I used my swarm to talk to the inmates, while the guards stood nearby. "What the fuck are you looking at?" Grue asked, raising a finger to his lips. "Three thousand dollar wonders," I replied, pointing in the direction of the throng of inmates. "The worst part of the city has been restored, things are getting better, but maybe that’s after the fact? If we’re talking about the worst part of the city, the Docks, where so many have lost everything, then…" I trailed off, lost for words. "It was where so many have lost everything," Grue finished. "Then where are your parents?" "I don’t know. Shelter-wise, I can’t say." ======== SAMPLE 11 ======== who said that he hoped it was because he was scared." "Not exactly true," she said. "I was in a lot of fear too, before everything went to hell. But losing Brian was never in the cards. Besides, he and I weren’t on speaking terms." "Whose side are you on?" "I’m on the side of the little guy. I think the big guys are so small because they don’t have the guts to go up against the big boys. Scion, Hatchet Face, the Endbringers… some of the heroes are bigger than they are because they lack the will to fight. I guess you’re on the same page?" "You should really beat him up before you kill him," I said. I thought about the memory. Brian had told me not to hurt the dog. Of course, that had changed the situation. "I’m on the same page as the big dogs, Amy," I said. "Bigger is better." "You are so lame." She snapped her fingers, and the chain rumbled. She turned her tail, sending occasional chain clacks towards Bastard. At my instruction, a large number of people began retreating from Bitch. The dog didn’t listen, but I could guess that was because he was used to hearing barking. He turned his head left and right to keep the echoes from crying out in his ear. It didn’t matter. A moment later, he bolted. The chain rumbled again, short as a button, and I sent a whole mess of bugs her way. No use. He was still trained to follow my instructions. If he was going to chase her, they’d have to catch up to him first. He was too big, they’d have to beat him, and I couldn’t really believe they would be able to kill him if he decided to run. It took five or ten seconds before the other dogs in the area joined the group of fleeing humans. Better than the two minutes it would have taken Bitch to reach Amy. There was a ding, and my swarm sense gave me a sense of what the woman was doing. She was using her power, but it was with some modifications. Her first aid training took a back seat to her plan. I could see each sign of confusion on Amy’s face. The swelling around the left eye was bad, and there was a desperation she wasn’t familiar with. Where the flesh was raw and bleeding where her eye had been torn out. Worse, where the bleeding was steeper, the flesh looked more like burnt foil than flesh. "I’m sorry," I said. "The hell you’re sorry?" "I shouldn’t have-" I stopped. The others were moving now, the dogs and Box all joining in with the trampling, shoving bodies and bits of flesh away. I could see the various groups of people backing up through the door that had been opening in the center of the street. Amy had made a lean toward the back of the crowd, and the others hurried her aside as she got close, pulling her by the hair. "You okay?" I asked. "No, I’m not okay." "Calm down. Boxy, Row R." Lung suppressed the urge to huff, and just like that, he was immobile. Wasn’t burning my hand an option? "Thank you," I said. "For letting me know you were with this group." He lowered his head again. "I don’t think this is a good idea," I said, looking back at him. "Not even if we all pulled our teammates out, this would give them something to do. We could… scatter." "Immaterial or non-material?" Lung considered for a few moments. "Some sort of metal as it relates to the source material? Non-material as far as how it’s concerned." I shivered. "That depends on the composition of the metal." "It’s nonexpressive. The spider silk we’ve got should restrict the kind of heavy metal they’ll use. It’s not a guaranteed way to block the agents, either." I frowned. "I can work with this. They hit my headquarters, they struck my workers. If the container they just brought from Tattletale is any indication, it’s not going to be perfect." Lung shook his head. "It’s not as good as we’d like it to be. Worst case scenario, it’s worse. My ======== SAMPLE 12 ======== who was already running. I had to re-group my army, reassess, shuffle, change my tactics, and talk with the Captain. I kept the bugs flowing in from the surrounding area, leaving a permanent barrier in their way. The way this worked, they had to leave some space unoccupied, someway. I didn’t anticipate them. The Captain was making his way upstairs. Someone shoved a bag of belongings at him, and the soldier laughed to lead him upstairs. The Captain entered the apartment, and hefted up his handgun like it was a shotgun. It was a green flash, not unlike one of Bitch’s dogs. It flickered, and there was a sound like a gunshot going off, but I could taste the gunshafts of gas in the air. My eyes shifted to the extinguishing smoke. "You couldn’t," I said, the instant my mouth moved. I was so focused on my words that I didn’t even catch the knife that followed. I brought it up to the ceiling and threw it down. The knife had already shattered a chunk out of the wall, where it served for cover, I thought. I climbed back out of the way as another gunshot erupted from the gun, obliterating a half-dozen of the spiders I’d been using to block the retreat. "It’s not the gun," I told the man beside me. I hadn’t brought up the gun, and nobody objected with a single word. The gun, I knew, was a trap. Glancing down, I saw, just by looking at the general placement of the gun, how it was positioned to impale the far wall and feed the resulting hole directly to the floor. It was a blind spot that nobody else could see from, and it was being used to bar another exit. "I can see through walls," the Captain responded. "You can’t see me with my own eyes. You don’t get that sense of invulnerability some get. Hell, Bitch might be able to ignore how her dogs are going through whatever bullshit I give her. Blink me if you succeed." He was a stranger, and I was acutely aware of that. People didn’t react like they could recognize or respond to a face. "I’m going to feed the bugs in the room. They’ll keep Bitch hemmed in, and it’ll keep the others from trying to leave," the Captain told me. "What about the others?" I asked. "These ones with concussion symptoms?" Each hand that was removed from the table made a shallow cleaving motion as it dropped back to the floor, simultaneously catching the table with both hands. Three or four feet of depth had been lost by the Captain’s team, and I could see the dirtied floor sloughing off to reveal the table. That momentum carried us over the wall and into the next set of traps. The Captain and the other villains began pulling out chairs and filing out of the room. "What are you doing?" I spoke up, wondering why they were leaving the table undefended. "We’re leaving the table where they laid it," the Captain spoke, clarifying the situation. There was a heavy handed attitude to his words, and I was reminded of the officer in the elevator who, for all his tenacious nature, was easily distracted or distracted by a burning manuscript. The Admiral and Walden had been the last to exit, and they joined the three villains who’d been waiting in the room. "This is someone’s home," I clarified the Captain’s statement. "Don’t," he stepped back, curt, as if he was going to say something to me, but he stopped. Instead, he spoke to the Captain, "Do you mind coming and talking to your patient, her? We could address some of her issues, refine these, if you could spare the time." I turned away from the table, looking for the source of the voice, the lingering image of my dad on the TV that so many hours of watching had fueled. The Captain was still looking at me, his expression grim. "I can spare the time," I spoke. I moved towards the Captain, fists clenched, "I’m going to go talk to her herself." I paused, doing my best to be quiet, as the others filed out. The mosquitoes and flies that were swirling in my hair didn’t help. It was like being in a cold room, knowing that there was nobody around, until all of a sudden, Rachel or Grue came charging in, and the session stopped. "That’s too bad," ======== SAMPLE 13 ======== who said. "The ones who don’t get killed, they keep going." It doesn’t matter if we kill them all. "Yes," the man agreed. "It doesn’t take much, either of us." I could see the others reacting, furrowing their brows. Rachel was only one, but her sister looked more concerned. "Do you need me to come?" I asked. "I can use my bugs, if it helps." Roughly half of the people in my range were reluctant or unwilling to hurt a fly. "No. The group here seems to be enjoying itself. They’re scrapping around for people to take care of, and I think they’re getting a greater success than we are." "And us?" my lawyer-in-training asked. Was she still worried about hurting a fly? "You mentioned what Lung said, about people feeling uneasy around you, now that you’re in custody." It would be a trap. I considered jabbing, but I had some basic countermeasures in place. "Lung, um, what he said applies in this case, doesn’t it? If he were to say that the people who are hosting themselves here aren’t the enemy, then we’re not under attack." "Then that’s why people aren’t coming. Or maybe they do have reason to be here, but they’re scrupulously careful. A check of the hour and a half passes, and then there’s a targeted attack." "I see," I said. "If it comes down to it, I can make an exit." "That’s what the Director wants. I don’t see why you’re being locked up." "You’re not, generally speaking," I said. "You’re not hurting anyone, you’re not taking any of the fight to the Endbringers. If there’s trouble, it’s going to be in our territories, and we won’t be able to use the portal until we’re in that region." "You don’t have a position to take," the Doctor said. "The positions are filled, and filled for you." "Well," Isabel said, leaning back in her seat, "That’s fine. You said you had information you wanted to share?" "Yes. I’ll see what we have." The Doctor tapped the button on the console. The satellite channel shifted to a live feed from the PRT’s servers. "We’re not in a position to watch what you’re doing," I said. "Because of the technical difficulties involved," she said. "Press play on the play button at the top of the page." We watched the feed. I could see the truck arriving. I could see Lung approach. He was massive, but he carried a mere eighty-two pounds. A monster of an animal. The shadows around him cast a warm shadow over the camera. The shadows around him were modified camera footage. He stood with his arms folded, his head cocked in front of him. His chest was similarly expansive. The second the shadows around him were cast, Lung was beside a cage with a Behemoth inside. He extended one hand and put it in the case of the case, holding it over his head with one hand. My second doubt disappeared. Lung unfolded his hand and punched the top of his head against the side of the door. The trigger clicked. A voice, both in English and Chinese, appeared on the camera. "The heroes of the Protectorate, you stand indicted!" the announcer spoke, in Japanese. The camera pans back to Lung. The roof is deflated, the cable that was pulling the device over the wall behind me falls out, cord trailing from the top to the panes behind Lung and the others. The device, a sphere with a lead-lined handle in the shape of a flower, falls to the metallic floor. The lead-lined door behind Lung is deflated, too. I could see the steel ball that was attached to it begin to rotate, then BOOM. The door itself looms large in the air. Relatively small. Lung thrust out his hand, and the ball deflated just as it had fallen from the roof. The ball now stands in a ball pit by the reception desk, with a ball beside it and a power bar in front of me. The receptionist blinks twice in the midst of the ball pit. Lung touched a button on ======== SAMPLE 14 ======== who would stop him from getting to them. After we lost Atlas, Grue and Bitch, my idea of being helpful is working for you. Turning a blind eye while dozens die every time you kill a hero, working for you at any cost, no matter how insignificant." He wasn’t wrong. Dinah had killed people who could have been his friends. Tattletale picked up Bentley, moving him further away from Hellhound. As they neared Hellhound, I lowered the boom in my voice. "Dinah, listen. I-" "I’m not listening to you," Dinah growled the words. "Okay, Dinah," Tattletale said. Then she glanced to my right, "Um. Can I get the fire out of this area so we can get people to help?" "Yeah," Dinah said. "Just remember what you said. The dog isn’t as loyal as you think it is. Trust me when I say it’s hard to get a dog that listens when you’re shouting." Dinah shook her head, and the movement was dramatically shorter. A change of small magnitude, compared to the whole mess just now. "Okay," Tattletale said. "Be quiet, Dinah. It’s Bentley." There was a crash the moment the dogs disappeared from my reach. "I’m going to try," Dinah said. "Where are your manners people?" "Quiet." Dinah shook her head again. "If you say anything, they’ll probably listen." "Ah," I said. I looked down. "Golden boy." "I wouldn’t say that," Tattletale said. "I wouldn’t, actually," Dinah said. Then she glared up at Bentley. "Bentley, nip, no more of that." "I know," he said, his tone a warning. "Too dangerous," she said. She sounded almost defensive as she said, "I never used that on Burton." "Ah, well. It’s the old adage about being wise, sharing your expertise," Bentley said. "Find something you like, then know where you fall on the scale. I’ll reach towards the middle of your body. The golden boy part of you winds up doing the lion work in disarmament, while the less vital stuff handles the weaker attacks." "Yeah. I’m in the middle of something, and I’m only half through." "You’re already equipped for half the fights we’ve fought, which is almost an insult. You’ve faced more intense competition than many of us in the last few months, and you’re getting weaker." "I don’t want to be disrespectful," I said. "But I’m not sure I’m really that much stronger or shorter." "It’s a heads I win, tails you lose kind of thing. Still, you seem to be in better shape than most. I’m inclined to think you’re more dangerous if your opponents aren’t aware you’re attacking." "What’s this?" Bitch asked. "Somebody wants to break the rules between us? Like a duel? She’s not even capable of losing confidence yet." I shook my head. "Calling myself stupid is a pretty strong label, isn’t it?" "What am I supposed to say is stupid, if it’s Vivienne from the girl group from the variety program?" "Silly. Sure. Stackhouse is stupid. Vivienne? Stackhouse’s a bit of a jerk. He’s smart, confident, responsible, but he thinks like someone that would walk around in tights all day. Basically, you see someone that’s done nothing but robbing banks, that’s managed to live off his looks, Wessex, Newfoundlander. And what’s arguably the most powerful man in the world thinks he can rip off the looks of countless others? Just about." "And he can," I said. "Stackhouse can. Only he gets the chance to do it, and the people that see him do it, they can do what he does. They don’t have to do what he does." "Isn’t that the whole point of the ruse? To confuse the issue?" "No," I said. "No. First of all, you can’t confuse the subject while it’s being debated. Your enemy won’t necessarily know the answer until ======== SAMPLE 15 ======== who has been out of the area for a considerable length of time." I raised a hand, "I don’t want a war. I’m not looking to start one." "We’ve investigated the area. We can confirm that the reception upstairs is intact. We are, however, concerned about the spread of parahuman behavior. If too many stepped up to fight, we’d become casualties of that, and not a chance I’m willing to give to Amy Dallon. Please understand, I’m not opposed to using my power to help with that, but I’m willing to see this done in a way that ensures it’s done right." There were nods from both of them. "Please have faith that he’s doing the right thing. The guy upstairs has been unwavering in his devotion to his vocation, and he’s done his best to help us along our way. He wouldn’t give you a fraction of what you really need, but he’d serve as your lieutenant and friend. That, and I think he’s secretly hoping you’d break rank and march your own group to victory." "The Simurgh," Charlotte said. "Yes. There’s something resembling a sixth entity in play." "Something?" Colonel Tom asked. Colin shook his head, "Nothing. I think what the man was suggesting was that his duty to his employer continued even after he’d left the city." "I see," Charlotte said, staring down at the floor. "I’d like to think he appreciated you joining us." "I’m still not sure what he meant by that," she said. Colin leaned forward, "I told my squad to handle this with care. Warn them if they see anything out of the ordinary, give them more powers if they report anything, they don’t engage." "I’m not so convinced." "Colin." He stood from his chair, pushed his long greasy hair out of his face, and then crossed the room to where his subordinate – a woman with auburn hair and a stern expression – was seated. She glared up at him. "Every assistant and under-assistant should be warned about working under him. He seeks out individuals with whom he may have some personal friction, and put them on alert. Failure to take this warning seriously may well cost you, as he often finds his way to subordinates with an individual on the verge of hysteria or emotional instability. Be vigilant." "We are emotionally stable?" Charlotte asked. "Not so different from your group, I take it?" Colin nodded. The woman continued, "Your group is well stocked with specialized knives, I believe? I believe your department store or chain store has stock outfitted for special occasions, Halloween, just on the other side of the tracks." "If I had trouble with any of my subordinates, was it?" "I couldn’t really give you an answer without giving away your trap, didn’t think you had it in you." Charlotte slowly raised her eyes to the ground. Even though she was still thirteen or fourteen, she somehow felt more secure about what she was doing than she had in years. The worst of it was that she had some insight into the Simurgh’s primary tactic. Getting in Colin’s bad books had been a matter of intercepting him as he moved around the outskirts of the city, harassing him and getting in the way. A quick glance showed that he was oblivious to some of the key things she was demonstrating, from a distance. The knife in her right hand was a matter of personal pride and self-defense; she was showcasing her competence as a warrior, practicing what she’d learned in the jousting and karate scenes. The color scheme was particular, with black being the default. There were also the green and white triangles, like the one over the pupil of his eyes. They were emblematic of the five primary colors of the United States of America; The United States of America, meaning Colin was a blue male, her mom tongue is a ‘m’, her dad a brown male, her friends are always male and thus always struggling to be ‘blue’ in some way, her neighbors are red, her house is yellow and last but not least, her lawn is green. Colin ignored the fact that she was staring at him in surprise, raising his left hand and making the blade twist and curve in the same movement. Like a martial artist holding their ground, he spread his arms, drew a breath, then delivered a strike. Her head shattered in the blow. ======== SAMPLE 16 ======== who had been left behind, a few stragglers that had swelled rapidly with exhaustion. They ranged the gamut from deformed humanoids that lacked eye sockets to quadrupedal monsters with complex lower bodies. They settled on the ground, climbing a sturdy three story wall to get to their destination. It wasn’t long before the Endbringer was upon us. The giantesses moved much like Grimm had moved late at night as they scaled the exterior walls of her unfinished tower. Swinging wildly as she moved, they threatened to topple onto us. Beside me, Imp pressed her fingers to her ear, and I could hear a noise like I had never heard before. A laugh. It was at a volume I couldn’t make out over the traffic on the road, the chatter of people trying to keep more profitable things from the open mouth of Highway 87. It was impish, jovial, cheerful. Fuck me, I was speechless. Imp turned to give me a smile, and I could see her teeth, white along the ridges, snout and between the lower jaw. She’d dyed her hair brown, and had added extra points on the cheeks and forehead with fur. The combination of her short stature and the way her small frame seemed to perpetually be in the way of my escape attempts was uncanny. The Simurgh had made for a pretty girl, at a glance. Looking at her, I couldn’t make out much else. But the thing that was creepier than her personality, what hit me more than anything, was the sheer effect her smile had. It was like a light had gone out in a room that had been completely dark before, except the space was full of light, and everything in the entire room suddenly lit up. It was like I’d glimpsed an effect in a painting, but the brushstrokes moved fluidly, with shadows, smoke, dust and drapery in motion, just like we saw a picture of a painting unfold. And I could almost see the same thing, from Imp’s perspective, as I glimpsed it in my own. I stood on the lip of the roof, and the Simurgh advanced just a little. In that same second, the wind ripped across my face. It had been after I’d moved to evade the Simurgh, and my escape route had been just beyond the corner of the roof. Here, it picked me up, nudged me towards the Simurgh, and then flew past me, disappearing. I’d read up on the people who’d died, understood what they’d done for Jack. But for me, it smacked of even greater things. I had this. The Simurgh raised one hand, and the winged creature, the shard-covered winged beast flew at me. I blocked it, and found the other side of the roof, an open area with more destruction at the edges. I got underneath and put air under my legs, moved my feet to draw a charge, then fired. My range was shorter, but my effect was wider. Half of the roof was destroyed, and the remainder scattered in a terrible explosion that flattened itself out and left me on the opposite side of the roof. The shockwave from my own body part shattering had moved me out of the way of the shard that had blasted the roof. The little room with the trapped civilians was so small I could have looked up and called for help, but I didn’t. Instead, I waited as the crowd moved towards the epicenter of the destruction. They were so dense, so many moving in different directions, it was almost impossible to see. I felt like a lump was swelling in my shoulders, a stubborn lump, but it was nowhere near as big as it had once been. I started to turn my head to see if I could spot where the tear in my mask was. I saw a figure in the crowd, high on a nearby building, hollering. I disoriented at the sheer number of people. Tattletale? No. I thought. Any of her? Then I saw where they’d clustered. A truck had smashed into a group of people. The only one on the roof was Revel, bleeding from multiple open sores. She lay at the center of the heap, her hands over her eyes. "Roushi!" I screamed. I pulled the arrow free of the pole I’d practiced on the other building. I pointed. He froze in mid-step. "Idiot!" He turned toward me. "What?" I asked. He lowered his arm that had the flaming arrow. "I’m not ======== SAMPLE 17 ======== who he was, how he interacted with people, what he wanted, where he wound up after an Endbringer event. It was only right that I ask: Am I on the same side as the others, Jack?" "I ask the same question," Jack said. He glanced up at the face of the entity as he spoke, but the entity was already glaring at him. "You are not alone in your concerns," Santiago said. "I’m one," Jack responded. "But I serve another master. A greater master." Santiago shifted position, so he was pressing his own weapon against the wheel well of the megaphone. "That you do? No. You hold multiple masters. We would be fools to twist the truths of one false step of yours to condemn us to a lesser existence. A false step of your own? We have the ability to put the pieces together." "We can’t." "This is a dangerous position to be in," Jack said. "Leave it alone, and we’re lost for words. But let the madness bleed itself out, and then we come to see just how much you’re responsible for what’s happening out there." "We’ll take care of ourselves after we’ve laid low for now," Santiago said. There was a pause. "We need your help," Jack said. "You can’t turn your back on our demands, but you can’t refuse our help." "What are you wanting?" "We want your help. Not as a group, but in order that we might do as much harm as possible." The Wheel man had a trace of a Scottish drawl, but it was quickly replaced with an accent as he directed it at his pawns. Jack waited until the threat was away, then launched into a tirade that would have sent a grown man running for the bathroom. "You’re a lower priority threat than Siberian," he said. Siberian turned to face him, pressed her hands to her head. She looked angry, had taken to looking at him with fury in her eyes, even in her sleep. "I am a higher priority threat than you three." "Dinah, Sam and I are on the same side," Sveta said. "We ward off your enemies and we negotiate. We’re better than the third of you three." "You’re defending us?" The Wheel man asked. "We’re defending you," Sveta said. "You know we can hold our own, that we have victories over the people with powers, too." "We’re not a threat to you?" "If you haven’t realized it already, you’re playing into his hands." "He knows we aren’t a threat. He’s been plotting this from the start." "Yes," Dinah said. "But there’s two missing pieces in that puzzle. He needs you, and you need him." "Three? So fast." "It’s a plan," Jack said, "One he hatched in a moment of desperation, desperation that spans every horizon. He doesn’t win every time." "Every time’s a flaw," Jack said. "He needs leverage at key junctions, and chaos to break down those forces that are working against us. He knows we built up our following amongst the prisoners, amongst the citizens we take in. Activating that anger, that fear, it is a dangerous road to travel." "He’s been around before," Dinah replied. "We’ll take you in hand, and we’ll offer you a deal. You head back to the city, and we take you apart, the individual parts reversed, and we cobble it together in a way that fits your personality." "Fits your nature?" Jack nodded. His hand dropped to his side, and he reached out to the pulley on the arm of the chair, pulling it back to reset it. He surveyed the room, where scarred, frost-covered bodies hung in straight lines. No doubt corpses that had been mutilated in the course of some ancient or terrible ritual. "It’s an interesting deal, but I won’t make you any promises. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you need, in the course of doing what’s necessary." "Very well. I’ll need a pair of tongs." "No. Here," Jack held out one hand. A plastic disposable knife that fit his hand. "Plug ======== SAMPLE 18 ======== who could reach her without getting in anyone’s way. "Don’t worry about me," I told her. "Just worry about the five guys and five girls that are staying with Shadow Stalker. If you think about how she might be able to hurt you, think about what it’ll do to your reputation, I’m sure we can arrange for you to stay at least for a short while. You don’t have to worry about joining the Wards, I don’t think anyone will bat an eyelash at you for joining them for a time you were already thoroughly debauched." I liked the sound of that. She met my eyes, then glanced at the others. "What you were talking about, Shadow Stalker, before, maybe, doesn’t apply to this." "What does?" "I was saying it’s all very possible to have a situation where you join the Wards and become a double-agent." "What’s that?" "If you gain control of a location, you can assume that anyone you hire to work for you also has a reason to want to serve you and make you richer." "Doesn’t seem fair that I gain control of you and then leave you to your own devices," I said. "It’s not unfair, as long as you do as you intend." "Um. What are we up against?" "Two months at the London school. Two months in Jefferson’s class. They’ll stick us with either. Jefferson mostly thinks Hyper-awareness or something of his. Mark is in a relationship." "Students with powers. It’s not unfair. It’s mostly against bad guys." "True." I couldn’t quite bring my truck outside to assist her with her costume. It was leaning against one of the walls, and I wasn’t sure if it could help, but I wanted to help. "So, what we’re dealing with here are the logistics of getting a member of the Protectorate to our location. Getting documentation, obtaining expert advice from a recognized name in parahuman studies. Making no mistake about the fact that we have similar names, but we respect Mark and Karen too much to accept someone who hasn’t been treated with respect already." I finished typing the letter and clicked on the button. The last document load took a bit too long, because of the way the system was loading it. Fortunately, the next document was already being loaded. I checked the document. It was loaded. I gave it a few more keystrokes to verify its contents. ******************************* /s/ guuun /s/ guuun ******************************* Ellis Island, December fifth, 2011 Tattletale: How’s Noelle? C/D: She came through once, but she left with a bad head injury. We’ve sent her to him to make up for it. ******************************* Ellis Island D: Sent to him with urgent delivery for no less then 30 minutes. No powers, complaints. ******************************* C/D: Sent back after just a few minutes on the phone with Defiant. ******************************* C/D: He said he couldn’t talk when she arrived, sounded annoyed. ******************************* C/D: He said he couldn’t talk after she left, sounded desperate. ******************************* C/D: He said he could talk for a few minutes, then hung up. We loaded it on top of our internal hard drive and resumed our check of the Birdcage. We opened the box with the Parahuman Response System. No worries. There was a crash and locking mechanism. Once it was loaded, there was no undoing the process. We ran some diagnostic tests. No more locking. The Parahuman Response System loaded in a moment. C/D: Crash landing. We signaled, nodded, took flight and flew for the Glenrode facility. Glaistig Uaine was supposed to be the guardian. Instead, like a lost cause, she gave a cry. We were checking the facility. The crowbar-thing was still there, doing its thing, but we’d set more disruptions in place. There were captive capes. We removed one from the system. It was a failed first attempt. Something with the interference of the witch-cube ======== SAMPLE 19 ======== who’ll get their hands on the papers from your library. Be sure to open the files and read through them, as we don’t want viruses or worms getting into the documents." The woman picked up the folder, opened it and handed it to Mr. Calle. He watched as the folders were opened and opened. Likes, dislikes, what do you think? Sharing the love from your team member… I dunno… I haven’t seen him in days. Sharing the hate? Hate to leave your team? He thought of what he’d said to get his morale up, before. He didn’t even want to think about the look of disgust on Carmen’s face as she read it in the gloom of the hotel room. The folders disappeared into his hands, and he hurried out of the room. He strolled down the aisles at the front of the store, a woman who was clutching a bloody napkin in one hand, and he almost fell out of his seat. Behind him, he could hear footsteps, footsteps of the woman who was in the middle of the counter, screaming incoherently. He made his way to the woman, grabbed her hands, and helped her to her feet. As he’d done with the bloodied man, he took hold of the other man’s arm. He knew how fragile life was in the city, what a soldier’s pride was. This was something he needed to help take back. Not that he had much to spare. He only had a few hundred dollars. He knelt, setting the bloody napkin in front of her, and she screamed. As before, the sounds of the crowd were before him. He ignored them. His eyes settled on the one woman who wasn’t sobbing. She was instead gripping the sides of her shirt, both front and back, as if she’d be punching it if she tried to stretch out her arms to their full length. Mr. Calle stepped into the mall, descending the side of the stage that overlooked the restaurant, the food court and the underground dynamic that was Whole Foods. As he got close, he could see the faint use of plasterboard and curtain rods that surrounded the inside of the mall. Nearly all of the customers who were currently inside the mall had left or were working elsewhere by the front doors. Men and women from all walks of life were congregating into small groups of their own. Family and friends. Friends. Into groups of no more than six, a group of no more than five. Into the far end of the mall, beyond the tents and beyond the crowd that waited on tables with empty plastic chairs, beer mats and plastic water bottles, the cold weather sleeping bags and tents, the homeless skeletor and tinkerman occupying the sleeping area, huddled together in a half-nap on the plastic sheet at the far end of the sleeping quarters, patrons and staff sleeping in the shade under a concrete ring of plastic. "This is better than what they had?" he asked the man who wore the metal mask. "Yes. It’s easier," the man replied. "And everyone’s happier." "Don’t pretend you know us, ‘Kid Win,'" Calvert spoke, "Or that we don’t know you, Extremist. Win, Sweeping, Ramrod, the others." "We do know you," the man replied, his voice tight. "You’re going to try and make us look bad, with this?" Mr. Calvert gestured towards the fake smile he wore, "To make us give you that crooked villain thing you wanted?" "That wasn’t my thing," the man spoke, stone-faced. "I wouldn’t dream of hurting a man, intimidating him like that." "You’ve thrown every caution you had away, and you’ve proven to be utterly implict. You violated every rule we had in place at this school. That said, if it comes down to it, we can trust that you’ll come to the table safely." "Fuck you," the kid retorted, before hanging up the phone. Mr. Calvert’s eyes glowed as he watched the gathering crowd. "Tell me, are you miserable, little freak? Will you be turning traitor no matter what I do? Or will you blow your whistle and become an enemy of all good people?" That prompted a flood of disgusting, NSFW comments from one of the boys who waded through the camp of frozen teenagers that sat around the counter of the cash register. The camp counsellor shot him a concerned look, and the boy silenced her with a wave of his hand. "Yes, I� ======== SAMPLE 20 ======== who had been waiting for her. A good few stood astride Atlas and pulled themselves up onto his back, setting their claws on his shoulders or shoving themselves in his ribs. "Hey now, no tickle," Miss Militia said, raising her voice to be heard over the whine of the bird’s wings. "Not the time. I’m complaining you didn’t listen to me, because I didn’t listen to you. You asked us to come along, we did. You told us exactly what we needed to know, we followed that up with a pretty thorough coverage of the Undersiders, and now we’re here." "That’s not what I said!" "And I agree with Miss Militia," Legend said, turning back to the laptop. "I think it was a bad idea." "What did you do?" Hero asked. "Brought Tattletale along to listen in?" Legend asked, looking up from his laptop. "There’s nothing stopping her from tearing up the rules and regulations at the convention, and I’ll give her a free pass as long as she’s with me. Chevalier has a code of conduct, but it only applies in this instance. No killing, no hacking, no altering databases, no active PIs or Cots, without prior written consent of the presiding officer. This goes no further than that. Any other infractions would see you landing in jail, and that’s a pretty big break." "I’m not cool with that," Vantage complained, perched on Atlas. "She did what she did, and you can’t point fingers. Go with your gut, make call on blame, whatever." "She changed her mind," Legend said. "Maybe it was the ride. Maybe she did something." "The line between the hero and villain is awfully thin," Flechette said. "Anyone who crosses the line does something, and they’re frequently wrong. And here I thought Miss Militia was beyond the call of the new hero. Come on." "You’re not giving a *****!" Legend snapped. "Okay, you’ve got me confused. What’s the difference between the two?" "The difference between villain and hero is nebulous," Flechette said. "Good guys sometimes cross the line, but it’s hardly something that routinely happens. There are callings and phrases that apply to everyone who crosses the line, but there’s no defining characteristic that marks those people as truly being members of the group." "There’s bound to be a nice clean way to reference stuff," Legend said, distractedly. He looked at the two chaps, where they were, in relative peace. "You guys can look at the files, let me assure you. I can vouch for Rachel, but I can’t speak for her, and I don’t know what her state is, so you’re free to speak on that subject as well." Flechette turned, looked critically at the man she’d stepped in front of, then back to Legend. "You don’t have any quarrel with Miss Militia?" Legend asked. "I do," Militia said. Her voice was a little harder. "She’s a deserving rival for any rank woman could covet. Above even Alexandria or Tagg in power, if not in terms of reputation… no offense." "It doesn’t matter," Legend said. He glanced at the two chaps. Both wore their costumes in black and silver. "This is beyond the scope of any one project. I can talk about the larger picture, with the Endbringer situation, the pressures exerted by multiple superiors, multiple threats, constant issues of grief and trauma…" "I know what you mean," Flechette said. "It doesn’t concern us. We dealt with one incident, yes? With that one cape, specifically?" "With the real threat?" Legend asked. "With man. With the unspoken threat of the entity, the primal entity, forever and an ever-increasing threat," she said. "We passed a milestone. It’s something I’m very proud of. The Endbringer was managed with the aid of the Simurgh, one Simurgh copied, essentially, and the groundwork has been laid for future attempts. With the knowledge of both the Endbringers and current capes, I can imagine we could regain whatever advantage came with standing out more in the midst of the dangerous situation." "I’m elated," Legend whispered. "Which is why I say you should step forward," Flechette told him. "Represent us, ======== SAMPLE 21 ======== who had a lot of weight around them. No, a small fire crackled at the edge of one window. That would be the reception desk. The group moved past the lobby in the general direction of the cafeteria, down the hallway, and into the cafeteriaette. As they passed the edge of the building, they split off into two groups, one large enough to pass through the edge and into the building. The group that remained remained passed through the glass in the same general direction they’d traveled from the lobby. They began to pass out of my range. Without me to guide them, their course was likely to veer inexorably towards the building they’d just entered. They wouldn’t be able to see or hear me as I marched towards them, but those guys were clearly capable of outrunning cars, and they had the ability to drop anything – a car without drivers. In any other circumstance, I’d backtrack and proceed only on foot, but the fact that they’d organized into two groups, with only the one or two cars that were absolutely essential for them taking the lead, it demanded respect. They started to walk with purpose, with the groups forming a loose triangle. I had the trucks move before they could be sandwiched between the two groups. Two vehicles cleared of debris, one moving just beside the other, the other parked in the middle of the road. "Austin, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to ask you a question." "Sure," I replied. My eyes met his. "Questions go with right answers, isn’t it?" he asked. He smiled, and I giggled, myself. "Austin, was it?" "It was." He smiled. "I’d like to think we did us proud." "Do you need anything?" He shook his head, "Bus tickets? I’ve got a bit of money lying around." I had the other members of the team haul some boxes to me. "Now, or wait?" he asked. I was close enough to feel reality begin to squeeze into my body’s fabric. My vision began to narrow. I continued to laugh despite myself. "Austin, wait. There’s never any point." I waited until the various teams were dismissed, and I could only wait as spectators watched this exchange. A crowd, maybe two or three thousand strong, milling around the site of the fight, each with their arms full, watching the fight with a pair of binoculars, or three, at the most. I didn’t want to look directly at Bitch or Tattletale, but I saw the fight end, the dogs hit a ram mounted on a dog’s back, and a growl rose from their mouths. None of those people I’d been looking at were the Undersiders. I saw a hand rise, seized up in a fist pump, the wrist of my arm curling upward in celebration. Behind me, my bugs caught a glimpse of tears forming in the corners of eyes. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t angry, or disgusted, or even horrified. There were ugly feelings, and I was only just realizing what they might be. I felt like I was growing, slowly, throat bulging, stuttering. As I bulged, my power reaching for air I couldn’t breathe, drawing it away with the first efficiency, the emotions a burner might generate, I felt my range getting thinner. Least of all. I drew in a deep breath, to take advantage of the fact that I was now thin, and emptied every cell in my brain of potential associations. I could guess what it was. I could see myself through the crowd, the bugs on the street level, the people who were just beyond the block I could see myself at the river. I could see my allies. Like I’d seen with Armsmaster, some of them were stockholders or partners in business I didn’t even know. I could see them as keying on certain things I did know, using those things unknowingly. I could see Grue, too, through me. He was clinging to Lung with one hand, his upper body pressed against the side of Lung’s neck, almost straining to breathe, clinging in spite of himself, seemingly almost as lost in me as I was in him. Lung had seized things in his massive hand, and controlled them. Even more shockingly, he was taking them with him, finding something significant in the process as he controlled others, using them to carry prisoners and carry supplies, as I’d seen him do with his own ======== SAMPLE 22 ======== who was there – or the people who didn’t show up. The Merchants, the Chosen, the Protectorate, the Wards… I was surrounded. If I focused on one target, it was maybe partially because of what my bugs did, partly because there were too many targets in the area, and this was a city like Brockton Bay, with a population of a billion, a media that was almost unlimited. People shouted, and they held hands. And they began to make their way to the nearest street, calling out as they moved. Images flickered through my mind’s eye, of people standing side by side, talking and shouting in unison. It brought tears to my eyes. I was put in mind of my first time in costume. The idea hadn’t crossed my mind until I was on stage with Battery. I’d traveled back that far, a few days ago. It had been one heck of a ride. On the first night I had my costume, I’d done the Heroic Hype Cycle with Madison and Sophia, bonding with them through our combined powers and singing hy mums to get the morale going at the gym. It had been a great night. Even with all the hatred my team had for me, it had been one of the best nights. I hadn’t been raised with good feelings or anything, but I’d made it through the night, standing toe to toe with the Slaughterhouse Nine, with tears in my eyes, a feeling of hopelessness in my lethargy. I woke up on the ninth, but only because I had to, the conflicting emotions so mingled with the excitement and the confusion of the past few days that I couldn’t hope to keep track of all at once. The memories were so fresh and new, and so incomprehensible. The situation so bizarre and unfamiliar. I’d planted a seed in my head, and finding it still isn’t easy. I stood, having made a deliberate attempt at being more tactical this time, and I used my swarm to get as many details and button as I could. The room looked more like a conference room than a courtroom, but there were chairs set out in front, and both sides of the table were set out with boxes of paperwork and evidence on them. Evidence, both the stuff that was in the clearly marked boxes and the less predictable stuff beneath the papers. Tsé. I turned towards the room, and people were coming into the room, filing in. I directed my swarm to the filing cabinets, and they began to gather, straining carefully as they hurried to back away from the door. "Taylor." She was entering the room in stride, too. I joined her, directing them to stay as still as possible and to crawl on hands and feet to the door. I didn’t need more than two steps to know she was there. Her hand on my shoulder. "It’s been a week and a half." I used my bugs to start organizing the new bugs, and it wasn’t a simple task. There were too many new ones arriving, many of whom weren’t even aware they existed. With just the one whiff, the newcomers were rendered temporarily forgettable. "I wanted to let you know I’m sorry, that things turned out like they did. I couldn’t reach out to you because of something like this, and I didn’t have the guts to reach out to all of you. I couldn’t make this call with Emma, Noelle or Madison. There’s a ton of people who really gave their all, who worked non-stop, and I couldn’t convince them all to come through." I swallowed, then pressed my hands together. "It’s not you, I don’t think. I hope you’re telling the truth. But you weren’t, and I’m okay with it." She stared down at her hands, and she looked mad, but she didn’t seem to be suffering. "I could tell you just how much I love you, if it would make your torture stop. I love you with a fiery passion, and I’m okay because of it. Don’t worry about it." She looked down at the table, and her eyebrows furrowed. "What?" I could hardly believe it. She looked angry, but it wasn’t like that was anything new. "I promised myself I would never write another letter," she said. "Never attend another ceremony, never visit another site, ever do another thing." She shook her head, and I could see the tension in her neck ======== SAMPLE 23 ======== who were standing off to one side, some still in their nanotech form. The gray-haired girl with the spider silk cape was the closest match to the man that Grue had identified as the source. A match made in… sense. There were those who didn’t fit the usual criteria. Newter was one. He didn’t dress like his normal self, didn’t talk like he normally would. He was someone who changed clothes, who scrubbed his floors with his heels and carried a heavy suitcase. It was probably reasonable to assume he’d taken a shortcut through the portal, been spirited across the continent to South America. The other abnormality was that he could teleport. No powers behind it, no technology. Only an intuitive understanding of the reality he was projecting. He only needed to think about it once. Just like how people with powers came up with clever names for familiar things, there were some who only ever had one power. It was interesting, when they had multiple powers, to notice which ones they didn’t use frequently enough together and mark them together with a semicolon. An interesting and versatile power, indeed. He teleported over to them, and the man staggered and fumbled as the combined effects of several anomalous eventsestine him. His flesh oozed from the joint of one hand, slowly seepage curdling the leather of his costume. A splitting beam sent the combined demon from the other hand, and he used the torn page in his ability to reshape it. A tail wrapped around the pole, a segmented limb spiraled around his leg. His efforts to reshape it with the shared demon were foiled by the arrival of another pair of beams, jarring him again. He teleported away before they could resolve the problem. With the fallen, there was a tendency for there to be stronger abilities and weaker. Sometimes there was a balance, between the two. Sometimes neither. Some abilities were so complex he’d nearly forgotten they were possible. With his eyes, he could see it all, the rendering of the abilities so clear he could almost forget about a thing, until he manually controlled it. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the battered Cabal. The man was lying face down in the floodwater, covered in his own blood. If there was a Cabal in the area, and if Hatchet Face was still bound by his holding power, then this might be the time to attack. Siberian was here, to capitalize on the chaos that Flood had created. Parian’s assistance, then. The flying squirrel, the only one that could fly, was helping to bind Hatchet Face. She was taking a direct route, avoiding the location of the beams as much as she was able. He teleported away before either effect hit her. Another counterattack was in order. Hatchet Face staggered to his feet, and then began struggling with Siberian, dragging the girl across the ground. Siberian summoned more clones of herself, throwing them at him. One of the attacks hit him. They sprang into existence at the moment of the impact, then began moving toward him, spiraling inward like an ulcer. He surrounded himself in his dark cloud. "…again?" "Again? You’re counting on us to save him?" "He’s going to fall into the trap you put in that portal, and you don’t have the ability to help him Fall. You have to be there in the first place." "I don’t need to be there to save him!" "If this works out, then it proves FSU’s Perdition is not invincible either!" She called out. She made a gestural gesture with her arm, pressing the Summoning Beacon to her chest. "It’s Perdition in person!" Funny, as I thought on it, how easily she seemed to reach that conclusion. Perdition wasn’t much better in terms of raw offensive power, but he could paralyze, deafen, demoralize and kill. I had to hail a devoured ship as it made its way to ground level and begin helping those hurt, scattering those who didn’t have any burning hands to burn. I didn’t get a chance to see if they’d be getting sorted out or not. One of the teleporters dialed the Undersiders. Trickster led the way, drawing his gun and hunkering down to a small peak by the Undersiders. Which set off a chain reaction, or a large enough chain, depending on how one wanted to look at it. If he wanted to take us all out before we got far ======== SAMPLE 24 ======== who, at some point, decided to press the attack." "You’re missing the point," I said, "You’re only reinforcing what people already knew." "What people knew," Mr. Calle said. "Number one, these guys, they’ve got minds like animals. Repetitive, always looking for something, always seeking something. Tireless, always seeking something to disturb or intensify whatever part of their lives they think they should be in control of. They thrive on conflict. They thrive on risk. And they’re happy doing it. It isn’t what they were raised to do." "It can be a pitfall, making the connection," Glenn said, "But even if you ignore the risks involved, can you really deny that it’s a nice, normal way of life for the members of their species?" I was having to maintain my composure, it seemed. "No," Mr. Calle said, "There can be only two possibilities. Either you’re fucking with us, screwing with the Doctor’s plan, which is highly possible given what we know about the Doctor’s power, or we’re right, and Noelle’s wrong." "Which brings me to the second possibility," Glenn said. "You’re saying there’s a third possibility, and I’m saying there’s a very good chance you’re right." I nodded, but I didn’t say it aloud. I focused on tapping my fingers against the table, as if I could get that message across. My swarm brought the wall to the front steps, and I gave Mrs. Yamada a glance. "Thank you," she said. "I’m not that worried about you," I said. "You were friendly." "I was friendly," she said. "But no longer am I. A few months back. We were talking ideas. Ideas they wanted to hear. Then one of them stood out. Not for me, mind you, but that one bothered me." "I’m aware," I said, reaching over to take the mangy pudgy dog’s hand and placing it on the small of my back. With my dad there, with Mrs. Yamada and the woman in the suit standing nearby. Maybe they could make it hurt less. "Idiot," Glenn said. "What was she to you?" "Don’t," Mrs. Yamada said, snapping at her. "Idiot. You’re such an idiot, you know that. Any time you start something, I’m already on it." Dennis spun around in his seat, still holding the phone, but his eyes were wide. "What?" Glenn asked. "It’s not stupid," Mrs. Yamada said. "You know what I’m capable of. I can telekinetically levitate boxes. I can throw trash out of a window. I have a low stress job. Think about that. You really let a dog make that mistake?" "Oh, come on," Glenn said. He frowned. "If you were really going to make that mistake, you could have notified me earlier." "I’d still think you were an idiot," Mrs. Yamada said. "So you want me to pet that dog?" Dennis prompted her. She shook her head. "No. Please, pet." "Alright!" Glenn said, his voice raised a fraction. He turned on his heel, crossing the room. Why couldn’t Mrs. Yamada have stayed more quiet? Because she was bothered by the frenetic, dangerous nature of the new environment, and by the memories that stirred and surprised her. It was like being inside Glenn Chamber’s head, but at least she knew where she was, able to stem the bleeding. "Pet," she said. The rabbit girl set about making small sounds of affection. Very understandable, given the circumstances. She hadn’t received any injections to her body, and her pancreas was the only thing that produced the whitish-black fluid that filled her veins. When she woke up in the morning, it had been shut down and empty of either her fluids or the animal she had used as a host. She found herself more or less alone in the house. Mrs. Yamada was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, her feet propped up on the armrest, a book in one hand and an intricate-looking china drink in the other. She had one foot up on the book so it wouldn’t drop off the metal hinge that held the front of the couch in place ======== SAMPLE 25 ======== who did you think she was until you laid a little that told you otherwise?" "No, I think-" Brian stopped short. "Right, she wasn’t your friend, she wasn’t in a romantic way." I looked away. "No. I mean, I would have, but-" "Right," Brian repeated himself. Then he paused to give Lisa a quick glance over his shoulder. She nodded. "I think," I said, "you have a knack." "What?" "I think you have a knack for figuring complicated things out." "Sure," I stepped closer, then extended my hand. He guided it toward my face. "What?" "If I give you the impression that you’re anything like your father, I think you’ll have a knack for finding that out quickly." I struggled to think of something to say to respond. Brian was a sponge, and so was I. Our responses were inevitably more complicated than simple nods or other basic affirmations. After one confused statement about my ability to manage people, I started to type out a response. A mishmash of stuff that made sense, but didn’t quite describe what I was feeling. I shut my mouth, righting where my expression had been mangled by my emotion, righting the wrong where my expression still hurt. "Maybe," I said, "You’d be a pretty lousy dad if you didn’t have that knack." Lisa grinned and shook her head, a short wave. "You say that like it’s a bad thing." "Not exactly," I replied, but I didn’t elaborate. "Doesn’t it bother you?" she asked. She leaned in close to get a look at Bitch and me, "You two, you seem to have things in common. You’re desperate, you’re hurting, and you’re really, really mad." "Mad" is the wrong word. Bitch wasn’t really psychotic, but she wasn’t in a state to write off the damage either done or caused. When she’d been hospitalized, I’d seen her work to try to get back to a more normal life. On a more emotional level, I could imagine how much it sucked to see her go from Bitch of the same indomitable nature that she’d been to the point of being suicidal. Or perhaps that was the way she saw things, her view of things skewed by her experiences with the ABB. But for now, she was still Bitch. "I’m not mad," Lisa lied, "I’m so excited I’m bursting with enthusiasm! I can’t even think straight. I’m so excited I’m going to be so busy and nothing will be able to distract me, because I’m going to be working so hard on this!" "If you were able to work, what would you have done differently?" I asked. "Actually," she shrugged, "I don’t even know. I was looking at the things that would have happened differently, and I don’t even know what I’m looking at. How am I supposed to strategize around all of this? I can’t read minds, so I have to simplify it to some degree. If I wasn’t so meticulous, it’d be a mess. But I’m organized. I’ll work it easier. Which probably means I’ll simplify it even more." "Don’t think that simplification is as good." "No," she agreed, as if she’d said things without thinking about it. Or she had, and then took one deep breath and said it. Whatever. "It’s better." "Then you have to let it be known how much I’m not sorry for the way I acted, or the way I phrased things." "Sure," she stepped close, then kissed me on the cheeks. "You do that a lot. And you owe me a favor, not just giving me this power, but also the chance to run. Come on." I reluctantly gave her the death glare. Then we got out of there, and Lisa divided our lab coats. If she couldn’t manage the casual kiss on the cheek, she at least would be able to contain things, make it light and friendly. The door closed, and she headed back upstairs. I followed her, silent. "Ugh, so weird," Foil said, after we’d settled in. "We have some explaining to do," ======== SAMPLE 26 ======== who took a seat, while others settled in. "Where’s your mom? You’re going to have to come for her…" one of the women muttered. "We should have talked about this earlier," Brian said, chuckling. He turned to the red haired woman. "What are you saying, Sabrina?" Sabrina didn’t look my way, instead turning her attention to the crinkly potato. She said something, but I couldn’t make it out. "I think she liked you more, as a friend than as a girlfriend," Brian mused aloud. I felt my heart skip a beat at that. He had been thinking, there, and he had been right. Eight or so years ago, before we had gone our separate ways, he had been thinking, Sabrina, maybe dating her wasn’t so wrong? Maybe I’d been overly sensitive at the time, too focused on the emotion of the situation, maybe I was still emotionally immature. He had never let me dwell on it. But now, even though I couldn’t see or hear anything as Lisa put her arm around me, I felt that heaviness that came with being there, knowing that in the moment, she would leave me behind and go find her, no obligation. And just like the girl who’d been so brave, Lisa chose to back out. Not because of an unworthiness I couldn’t understand, but because the act of running was unpractical. She’d expected confrontation, and she thought she’d hit a little raw. I was left with the empty chair, barely recognizable as such, and a feeling of profound emptiness. I’d shaken off the last of the caffeine, and my thoughts were clearer. So much easier to engage with the others, to get to know them. Maybe I’d done that too much at a young age. Maybe I was a loner, too focused on myself. I’d tried to engage in some kind of shared conversation, and I’d failed because I couldn’t think of anything to say. The others were sitting around me now, not in the classrooms, but elsewhere. I felt a growing exasperation. Why couldn’t I just communicate? to Lisa, to Alec, and to the dog? "There’s communication issues," Brian pointed out. I shrugged. "I guess most people aren’t talking about it in front of the rest of the school." "You’re not going to get drafted?" Alec asked. He’d pulled off a hood and put it over his costume, exposing a round face with whiskers pointing down at his knuckles. I raised my eyebrows. Eidolon was here, at least. I couldn’t simply fly and save everyone. Were they under the same restrictions? "Don’t say that." "My teammates will," I answered. "You obviously haven’t, for the reasons I just explained. Everyone knows your power, and no one’s being coy about it. Taylor was being careful, right?" "Yeah," I said. The others were settling down, now. Alec was packing his stuff and leaving as soon as the other kids in the room had quieted down enough. "I’m going to go see if my dad has video of the Eidolons." "Done," Lisa said. "My dad’s still at the hospital," I said, "Getting x-rays and stuff. Why aren’t you letting me go?" "We did plan against night like this," Brian pointed out. He rolled up his sleeves and stepped onto the bed. "You’ve got another reason for keeping me," I said. He shrugged, "If you aren’t going to cooperate, at least get out of here more." I glanced down at the hand that he still clutched. My hand was still sticky with blood. "Another reason?" "Keep me safe." I looked away. Instead, I pointed at Tattletale, "Remember? When you first pulled this thing on us, Lung was furious at me for pulling the fire alarm on in one of your first encounters. He cut off one of your hands, the one he tried to cut off during the confrontation at the hospital, just a little while ago. But he didn’t try to cut off your finger anymore. You love him." My bodyguard was right, I thought, hating myself just a little. "I know," she said. A little too fast. Damn her. "But that’s better than having ======== SAMPLE 27 ======== who had been able to make contact. It was possible her power was projecting the idea onto his mind-body duality. Another possibility was that it was a projection that differed for each of them individually. Either way, it was something we could use against Scion. We’d achieved some sort of coordination, and movement was possible. As Tattletale steered us towards the landing zone, I used the clairvoyant to bring the others to us. Miss Militia had the rifle, me with my knife. The other two guns were the polar opposite. Miss Militia had a gun I couldn’t see, a sword, which was the only real weapon she had at her disposal, with an expanding sheath of blade extending over her forearm, or a tricorner, which was a large blade that extended between her fingers. The reason she wielded a blunted baton was apparently to facilitate her rapid-fire succession of button presses, to prevent her from doing something like flicking a switch on a lighter, going off at the wrong moment, or simply dropping a grenade. She tended to have at least one person dead before she got something else in her off-hand. Reaching behind her back, she had a taser in one hand, another weapon holstered in the other, a lantern, lanterns, rope and a book in her other hand. Scion’s lightning had cracked the pavement twice, but the flammable outer layers didn’t seem to have done much damage. The ground was saturated with the superheated gases and sizzling acid of the fires that raged around the ruins. The shimmer in the dark made it all but impossible to see, much less to see-out. I turned to my left to look down at the water that was filtering in around the ruins. My bugs noted Neon’s presence, but she wasn’t doing much to impede Scion in the water. They were warming to that idea, I’m not- Bitch. I stopped myself before I could finish the sentence. She was getting further and further away. She thought she could stop him with words. Sorry, Taylor. I wasn’t talking to you. It had worked a hundred years ago against the Pequod, when she’d first set her Penguin away from the Boston Birdcage. She thought she could fight him now. Who is she? What objective is she serving here, beyond the curiosity of mortals? She’s sick, and she needs to heal. -and I don’t have the words to say something to her, so I’ll say what my bugs tell me. The Simurgh had maneuvered things so the wards, replete with instructions and caveats, were placed on top of one another, with Nix and Shrike’s ministrations standing in for the actual activation of the respective devices. They were still working on figuring out how to manage the animals, I noted. Penguin and Behemoth were free to attack in stride, the two apex predators having trouble with the extra hull covering the rest of the platform. I’d hoped the wards would keep Behemoth from going after Scion while supporting the shoreline, but he hadn’t been looking like he was having much difficulty getting a grip on the defending heroes. It was a question of his wanting to stay out of the way, and my not having the means to help him. Which left me one to wonder why we’d put him here. I shook my head a little. "…He does what he does because he needs to." The Simurgh moved her bundle of energy again, then moved three spaces to my left. Again, he ignored it. He settled for targeting the individual craft that were arrayed to protect him. I could guess why. They didn’t have any sort of antigrav. I moved my bugs closer to the portal, and again, he ignored them. I thought for a second that he was putting them to use, but there wasn’t anything special about them. Wards, drones, whatever you wanted to call them. "What do you mean?" I asked. "When Scion was fighting Behemoth, many of the heroes mobilized to try and stop the monster. They couldn’t, he couldn’t affect them, so they retreated, or they fought in sectors. Here, here, there was a tie between the hero and civilian that was rendered almost impossible for the hero to help. He evaded, hid, or used teleportation to get away. Until he came back. Which was only the tip of the iceberg. After that, things basically went back to the way they had been. Me, you, us, the heroes and the villains ======== SAMPLE 28 ======== who could be on our side, and it became all too easy to see just how big the problem could become. If we allow Scion to come to pass, all the more reason for the Endbringers to come to pass." "Don’t be so sure," Trickster said. "They didn’t need a test case like me to pull this. Deep breaths, first aid, communication." "Right. Well," the dark haired girl said, shrugging. "I suspect there’s bound to be more questions. When the Slaughterhouse Nine got their hands on us, what were they thinking? That we, parahumans, could handle their numbers? Maybe we could have handled more than they did, with the right measures, but they didn’t need a mental age of four to put off the hits and stop the maddies. They hit multiple times over a six month period, and the door kept closing." There were others who chimed in, talking about what they could see as the tragedy of Noelle’s creation, the wound it had received. "There’s got to be a way we can slow things down, stop them from moving them to safety," Sundancer said. "What are we slowing them down for?" Faultline asked. "I can’t say," Trickster answered, his voice quiet. "Because we might be slowing them down for nothing," one cape suggested. "It’s an overused power," Faultline said. "And I’m not saying overusing it means anything." "There’s a difference between being able to do something and being able to do something with something," Tattletale said. "He uses the ability to perceive, I use my ability to think." "I couldn’t be the one to talk out my brother," Regent said. "Well, don’t be silly," Tattletale retorted. "You’re not my brother. That’s the sum total of your problems. I can find a way to help you, and I’ve done that, if you want to compare us." "You want to hit me?" "You were my best friend. If anyone has the right to do this to me, it’s me. I’ve been faithful, and I betrayed that trust when I decided to come here. When I decided to take this city, and the Raptor home, and leave them to their own devices, I explained everything." "You don’t know anything about them?" "I’ve spent far too much time around these guys, and I’ve grown weary of explaining things to people who do what they want to do. So I decided, ‘OK, enough. I won’t stick around here when these apes fuck with my family. I’ll leave after seeing them leave, but I’ll never talk to my family again.'" "You’ve already said, you don’t know anything about them." "That’s what you said to get me to stop talking. I’ve already cross checked it." "So you’re lying." "No," he shook his head. "No. I know what you mean. But I’m only trying to get the ball rolling. As far as I know, the preparations are complete. The costume’s only aesthetic, and it won’t impact the animals much. The flight unit inside the suit is running on autopilot, and the suit’s thinking in general, though I probably don’t need to know that. The idea of utilizing the suit’s potential is something I made with my bugs. If I have the ability to make millions of dollars, maybe I use it." "So you’re not willing to go to jail, and you’ll join the group of heroes who are threatening to revoke your powers," Tattletale said. "That’s ridiculous. At some point, you’re going to run up against a circumstance where you had to, and you had to decide that you couldn’t continue to be a subordinate and take orders from me. No. That’s ridiculous and ridiculousism, and it’ll sit poorly with me when you try to use that." "Maybe tell them you’re staying on task and watch your older brother while you solve this fucking case of cap facingplant abuse." "I’d rather not watch brother turn into a monster, and I’d rather not go down that road." "Oh? He’s happy?" Someone asked. ======== SAMPLE 29 ======== who was going to be the point of contact for each of us, and her. There was a long pause where we were both thinking exactly this. "What happens if you don’t reach an agreement?" I asked. "You’ll keep saying the same thing," Regent said. "We’ll keep you waiting until the deal happens, and then you’ll be like Grue. Off the radar." "I’ll take a haircut, then I’ll give you the skinny on whatever she comes up with," I said. "I can’t tell a group of strangers just how fucked up their world is, while I sit here lying in their company. You don’t get me saying something sensitive, like revealing my secret identity, without the others being aware." They weren’t getting me in any trouble. A little extra charm, a little more discreet communications channel, and they had the full package. I wondered if Tagg would follow me into a bar or a restaurant. "I-" Rachel started, then broke off before finishing the sentence. "-think I can figure something out, after I’ve seen this much. Impatient. Let me think." I shifted position, and felt the hood of my sweatshirt pull up around my neck. Then I pulled it down. Only two inches' worth of skin. Odd. When feeling particularly moody or lonely, or being pushed around by an angry mob, it could mean my clothes would come off. Socks were perhaps the closest thing I had to personal protection. "Just going by what you were saying about the universe being a bubble, odds are pretty fucking good that someone’s just as messed up as you are," Tagg said. "What’s the odds?" "So low. So low." The table at the end of the hallway had been rearranged. A secure room with a machine at the bottom, surrounded by eight armed guards. "Well then," Tagg said. "I’ll fucking work." It was a relief. If they were going to let me go, they would have let me go in a worse situation. "I suppose I’ll be wanting to know how you do the honors and kill him," I said, and I raised my voice. Prey 14.3 The back of a van loomed ahead of us. The guards scanned us twice, then wheeled around. They fired one gun at it, and the driver deigned to back out. Reaching the van, we climbed in. Three floors, and I was confident enough in my ability to use my bugs to indirect my path that we didn’t need to venture up that far. Rachel was almost more of a spectator than part of the action. She seemed to hesitate for a second as she scanned the parking lot, then she marched towards the vault door. I could see her get closer, almost as if she was anticipating an attack at any moment. She got her gun from the side of the vehicle, then raised it to its full length, extending the barrel towards the vault door. I took that for assent and was prepared to draw my own gun if it came down to it. "Do it," Tagg said. "I’m only asking because… this is a problem. There’s too many threats here. And it’s not just Lung and the ABB that are this easily distracted. There are others. Let’s make no mistake, this is a priority situation." "You’re not being decisive," he said. The words were a non-sequitur, but I suspected he was expecting her to point to where she thought the threat was located. I glanced at Grue. "You’re not being decisive." "I really don’t care and I don’t want this fight any more than you do." "You don’t understand, you don’t get it. And you’ll know that if you talk to anyone. They’ll tell you it’s because you don’t give a damn about them or about the situation." "Yeah," I said. "Listen," Tagg said, "I’ll explain. This ended badly. So I need to do this again. Like hell you don’t take the bait." "You do care!" I said. "I do," Tagg said, shaking his head. "But I have a different perspective. You work for Cauldron. Your powers?" "Not as strong as they claim. I can only assume they’re related to number crunch ======== SAMPLE 30 ======== who she believed would stop Scion the second he let himself go. I could see her standing there in the dead center of the mall. Tattletale, still clutching Miss Militia’s throat, a knife held in the opposite hand. The Director was talking. Her voice was quiet, her grip on the knife retained enough of it for only a moment, but it still threatened to draw attention. Scion erupted with fire, and the blast went through the barrier. Tattletale was flung through the wall, tumbled through the floor, landed in the midst of a surf of overturned carts. She barely seemed to care, continuing to blaze with the extinguisher in her hands. I hurried forward to help her. She was having trouble keeping the knife in reach. Golem. Had to be the man with the portals. He was fighting with the renegade scientists, and I could hope he’d outranked them in knowledge. The bodyguard. I’d only seen him in the photos. I saw him on TV, several months ago. He’d been hurt, and Surgeon was apparently intent on giving him the same care that Bonesaw had given Bitch. A tendril snaked around one of Rachel’s legs. I swatted it out of the air, futile. A tourniquet. He was flailing for breath, thrashing, when the tendril of the tendril of black cauterized iron reached him. It didn’t matter. The blade pressed against his neck and he went limp. When he came to stand, he was barely able to sit upright. His right arm had been clipped behind his back, the tourniquet clotted in the wound. It took two minutes to get Rachel into a standing position. Jack was backing up a little in the direction of the locker. "Let go," I said, quiet. "I gave you two options. You can run or you can stay." "I… it’ll be dangerous." "I don’t know the circumstances, but if you were debating whether to stay and face the consequences later… yes. I can’t help but notice you’re smart, Tal." I’m sorry. He was just staring down at me. "Stay," I testified. "Whatever else happened, we can minimize the damage. Yes. We both know you’re dangerous, both of you." He stared down at me for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that I might have thought he was secretly agreeing, if not outright agreeing… "…But we can minimize the damage. You asked to join the Undersiders, Tal, and I gave you the OK." I’d known he was about to speak. "If it’s the change we get, the save we get, and all the souls we get back, it’s worth asking for what we offer. So you hear me say it again, understand? We are merciful, compassionate. I’m willing to give you the ability to tear down this monster if you’re willing." Did he hear me? Did he listen? He turned, struck out with his claws. "You’re evil, you’re mean, and you’re shortsighted. What makes you think you can apply these powers to things that are permanent? What’s the fitting progression?" Golem began forming two hands, extending each towards the center of the metal hallway. A beat passed. "You’re not shortsighted, but are you driven to make a difference? Passionate? Do you get angry, passionate?" Drive to accomplish something. "You’re confused, even if you don’t look for it. You’re passionate about something, you’re spontaneous, and you’re utterly ruthless in execution. Tal always said it was the same way around us. You can’t act with conviction when the enemy is halfway around the world." "We’re not like that anymore," I said. I’d sensed it, but I hadn’t said it aloud. "If you’re not living in the zone," Golem said, almost whispering. "Rey does it differently," I said. "He’s left his old house, he’s occupied it, he’s used it. It’s almost become a laboratory. All he has to do is step into a room, and the whole world goes to hell. The inhabitants come, they* annihilate each other, and the